Any reasonably astute observer of politics knew within hours of Osama
Bin Laden’s killing that President Obama would take as much credit
for the hit as humanly possible. What we didn’t know is that he’d
turn it into a full-blown campaign issue – and that in the process,
we’d find that he fulfilled all our worst fears about his weakness in
the first place.

This week, President Obama’s campaign put out an ad suggesting that
had Mitt Romney been President of the United States, he wouldn’t have
authorized the mission to “get Bin Laden.” That ad featured Bill
Clinton – yes, the same Bill Clinton who routinely missed
opportunities to get Bin Laden – stating that Obama took “the harder
and the more honorable path.” Then these words appear on the
screen: “Which path would Mitt Romney have taken?”

The answer: the same path as every President of the United States in
the history of the country. Even Jimmy Carter (as Romney said) would
have had no problem making this call. The fact that we were all
surprised – and face it, we were – when President Obama ordered the
hit is evidence that we didn’t expect him to do the right thing.

In fact, as the evidence shows, Obama did the right thing only after
safely ensuring that should anything go awry, he’d have someone to
blame. Here’s the memo that then-CIA head Leon Panetta wrote about
the Obama order:

Received phone call from Tom Donilon who stated that the President
made a decision with regard to AC1 [Abbottabad Compound 1]. The
decision is to proceed with the assault.

The timing, operational decision making and control are in Admiral
McRaven’s hands. The approval is provided on the risk profile
presented to the President. Any additional risks are to be brought
back to the President for his consideration. The direction is to go
in and get bin Laden and if he is not there, to get out. Those
instructions were conveyed to Admiral McRaven at approximately 10:45
am.

Notice anything odd here? There are a few elements that are strange.
First, Obama places all operational authority under Admiral McRaven
(who, by the way, received exactly zero credit in any of this). To
ensure that Obama would be able to throw McRaven under the bus should
things go south, he spelled out that the approval was based only on
the “risk profile presented to the President.” Any additional risks
were to be “brought back to the President for his consideration.”

This is strange language. Typically, it is understood that a
president is giving orders based on the risk profile presented – what
else would he give approval for an operation based upon? The extra
sentence here spelling out how Obama might stop the mission if the
risk profile changed is extraneous. More than that, it’s troubling –
military situations are always fluid, and the risk profile constantly
changes. Were the military to update President Obama with every
change in risk profile, the operation would never take place.

But Obama did want the operation to take place. He just wanted to be
able to cover himself if things went wrong. He could always say that
the risk profile had changed and that he wasn’t informed. He could
blame Panetta or McRaven.

That, of course, has been President Obama’s M.O. throughout his
presidency on foreign policy. When he gave the military fewer troops
than requested in Afghanistan, he blamed it on his generals. When
things go poorly in Afghanistan, it’s Bush’s fault. Everything is
always someone else’s fault. But when things go right, he takes all
the credit. In Obama’s new opinion, he’s the only man who would have
made the call to get Bin Laden. As he said this week, “I said that
I’d go after bin Laden if we had a clear shot at him, and I did. If
there are others who have said one thing and now suggest they’d do
something else, then I’d go ahead and let them explain it.”

Even Ariana Huffington finds Obama’s grandstanding on this issue
despicable. And so, apparently, do a number of Navy SEALs, who
usually remain anonymous and silent for the most part, but have
spoken out on this occasion. As Toby Harnden of the UK Daily Mail
reported, “Ryan Zinke, a former Commander n the US Navy who spent 23
years as a SEAL and led a SEAL Team 6 assault unit, said: ‘The
decision was a no brainer. I applaud him for making it but I would
not overly pat myself on the back for making the right call. I think
every president would have done the same.’” Zinke wasn’t the only
SEAL speaking out. Harnden reports the words of Chris Kyle, a former
SEAL sniper “with 160 confirmed and another 95 unconfirmed kills to
his credit,” said “In years to come there is going to be information
that will come out that Obama was not the man who made the call. He
can say he did and the people who really know what happened are
inside the Pentagon, are in the military and the military isn’t
allowed to speak out against the commander- in-chief so his secret is
safe.”